Blasters suck, the movie.

This is your opinion and you're entitled to it. My opinion is that the game provides me with a certain set of tools and I'm going to use each whenever a situation arises that I can yield strong results by using it. Tool metaphors sort of allude me since I'm a vegetarian musician who's never done manual labor in his life, but I'll try. You really can't fault someone in a craftsmanship competition who's given the same choice of tools to use as everyone else in order to achieve the best results. If you can accomplish multiple things with a single item more efficiently, and it was given to you within the parameters of the project without breaking the rules, I would say you are the most clever craftsman of them all and deserve any prize you receive.

Go for it :]

In a craftsman competition, it's the results that are judged, not the tools used. A competition to see who makes the best coffee table or who can craft the best thing using only dremel tools.

It'd be like having a contest to see who solos a GM the best or who has the best application of -ToHit or area damage. The point being, how many varied entrances would Blaster have in many areas of competition?

For GM soloing: /mental.../mental and /mental

For debuffing and self mitigation? For area damage, yeah there'd be some varied entries. And how much else can blaster perform well at?

Nor is it simply loldrain psyche I win.

Use of drain psyche on an SO build or even a modest IO build will not be enough on its own to either keep your blaster alive or floor a gm's regen rate consistently to enable said player to defeat the gm. All that's been proven with the absurd amount of influence poured into a build. Yes things like soloing a gm is "possible" but this is a special case and not to be considered a standard nor does it make drain psyche overpowered.

If anything, drain psyche is a good reason for why blaster secondaries need to be brought up to a similar level of usefulness. Maybe not in the same regard as DP but somewhat equally beneficial to someone rolling a blaster. Rather than looking at it like "oh one power is OP", lets look at what the other secondaries really bring to the playstyle of the AT.

Devices: Arguments can be made for the limited utility of a st immob, caltrops or a stealth toggle can bring but my personal opinion is powers such as trip mine don't suite the mechanics of the game. At least not anymore... *looks at 5 second cast time* Then again numerous secondaries have ST immobs. So whats devices really boasting? Nothing that makes me wanna roll one.

Elec Manip: A damage aura with a generous radius that will most likely get your blaster killed should he aggro first, a few decent melee attacks to fit character concept if you like but not necessary or particularly useful. Oh power sink, yes power sink is good but /elec is not the only secondary to have end management tools. A ST hold? Yes decent DoT but not really a game changer.

Energy Manip: Again, optional melee attacks, a sprinkle of KB and stuns in-beaded in said melee attacks and Conserve power (theres that end management i was talking about). Power boost and boost range are the real reasons you'd roll /EM.

Fire Manip: This is probably 1 of 4 secondaries I'd consider to have more useful powers outside the 1 or 2 outliers that other sets seem to have. So it gives you 1. options, and 2. powers worth taking. More aoe? combustion and FSC. CHECK. end management? consume. CHECK. Damage Aura(s)? blazing aura and hot feet. CHECK and CHECK. Oh and who doesn't like the new front loaded burn? All that being said, you can probably get enough AoE out of most of the primaries so I'll chop half this secondary up to concept/personal preference.

Ice Manip: A medium radius debuff aura on a blaster? really? please... Sub par melee attacks, a small ice patch of limited utility, a sub par version of Shiver (only 10 target max last i checked), a ST hold and a near useless melee Mag 2 sleep foot stomp clone only with no damage unlike the tanker version. Oh and a smaller radius. I move to say "buff ice manipulation" and leave DP alone.
Seriously.

Dark Manip: Soul drain on a blaster? OH GAWD. If that's not OP i don't know what is. Nevertheless, I'm a fan. Smite and MG? Finally some melee attacks worth taking. Dark consumption, again more end management and with damage to boot. A short radius damage aura? Well at least skipping this makes room for more powers you might not have room for if you chose another secondary, and dark pit. A mag 2 stun is gonna split people down the middle on whether to take it, but at only a 60 sec recharge and a 20 ft radius, if you have something to stack it with, this is a decent pick. Over all /DM is decent.

and finally Mental Manip: Really what does this bring? a cone, a generous 15 foot PBAOE with moderate damage and drain psyche. Everything else is already provided by other secondaries in a slightly different fashion.

So... basically, EM has boost range and power.
DM has soul drain and some actually worth while melee attacks.
Elec has power sink and some equally hard hiting melee attacks.
Fire has more AoE than you probably need and some end management.

That leaves Ice and Devices damn near the bottom at least IMO. So maybe lets draw attention away from a power that's worth taking and let's bring these sets up to par cause honestly why would you choose either outside of concept?

And that's where the analogy runs smack into game design. In real life, sure it'd be fantastic if you had an I Win button, and every time you pushed it you created a piece of furniture, a new hit song, and $1000.

But game design relies on restriction of power for game balance, which contributes to enjoyment of the game. The reason we don't get I Win buttons in game is because it's not fun. Push the button, the game is over. Hell, RL craftmanship is the same way: you don't necessarily create simply in order to have the result, you create to have the satisfaction of knowing you made that thing. Pressing a button and having a hit song in MP3 pop up doesn't confer any artistry on you; all you did was push a button.

So it is in the game. If you can hit Drain Psyche when it's recharged, then do what-the-hell-ever and still win, how can you claim any skill on your part? You didn't do jack except push the button.

Now granted, a lot of the skill in the high-end game comes from being able to accumulate and properly slot IOs, and DP isn't necessarily all that incredible without them. But that's one facet of player skill; being able to apply powers when needed is another. And I Win buttons just don't take any skill and aren't good for the game.

And the text I've capitalized and made obnoxious with arrows proves that DP is not an "I Win" button. Rather you just stated so in the sentence following that. Call soloing a gm with said super Arch/MM build luck, call it skill, call it whatever you want, it's still possible so that arguments put to bed, this doesn't invalidate DP nor does it prove its OP. All this proves is that a player with enough time and investment, skill with mid's and maybe a bit of luck pulled this off. SO WHAT. Lets move on, and stop beating the dead horse. DP is fine, lets look at the damn near useless secondaries blasters are plagued with eh?

Not to mention this thread was supposed to be a place for people to share blaster feats wasn't it? Not lets beat the OP into submission until he thinks we're right or we prove his opinion from another thread wrong.

I find it's draw good if you want to solo AVs/GMs. Otherwise, in my expeirence anyways, I didnt find it's +survival all that great. :/ Not on it's own at any rate.

What I did like about Mental myself was just the added AOE it gave to non weapon sets, on weapon sets I tend to stick with just the PBAOE.

And the hours upon hours I spent hypothesizing my next secondary main character, researching and compare/contrasting different sets across different AT's, ultimately deciding on the combination that would be most suitable and powerful in regards to how I play and what I wanted to accomplish, followed by the countless drafts and redrafts from trial and error constructing a perfect build capable of meeting all of my goals, followed by the almost a week and a half it took me to collect all the IO's to create the character, followed by the just over a week with 3-4 hour play sessions every day consecutively to solo the Blaster to level 39, followed by collecting my passive accolades, followed by the 850 million influence I gave my buddy Dechs to PL meh to 50 already because I had an over 20 billion build waiting in my base for me and I wanted to test it, followed by reconfirming all my performance hypotheses and testing the application in various scenarios, intertwined with collecting Incarnate abilities (something I'm still working on)

And the list continues to continue.

The point is that I don't just make alts like some people do. When I make an alt, I make the hell out of it. What I've invested into my Blaster is in no way contingent upon simply hitting an "I Win" button and accomplishing something. I put a great amount of effort into my characters, and in this case spend over 20 billion influence on them before they even exist, plus all the other countless investments of time, effort, and research I've already mentioned. Wanna know what the worst part is!? It's the badges! I have this overwhelming need to collect freaking BADGES on him now, after all of this. And I'm not even done with his Incarnate powers yet!

Aww man. Not this again. I really thought we got past this. Now I have to quote myself some more.




There are better examples of my "campaign to buff blaster secondaries to the standard set by /Mental" throughout this thread, agreeing with the notion that all blasters are not fine due to other secondaries underperforming and /Mental Blasters performing at a comparable rate to melee damage AT's. It's way more than that, I've had to repeat this sentiment about a thousand times by now, and I'm just getting really tired of it while trying to keep my cool and not be disrespectful to anyone....

All that being said, please read my freaking posts going forward before you make the same might-as-well-be copypasta assumption made in the post I'm quoting at the top of this rant. Please, please. I don't want to have to repeat myself anymore.

This is stealing from my AE time (and its been a busy weekend so far) but I squeezed in one very ugly pylon run. I'm apparently out of practice on pylons and also really need to get with slotting those KB protection IOs. Still, ugly and all, here it is, if you want something to compare to. In the future, not getting hit in the face first and maybe toggling on resistance toggles from the start would be better, but I get about 3:27 or 207 seconds from my first activation of PA to when she goes boom, which is an effective 313 dps (~128 from -regen, 185 from actual damage). With a little practice tuning it looks like I could eventually turn in a sub-3min time, but that might be close to the limit with my current build.

Now going to go see Hunger Games.

Dude, I know what your position is. You think they need a buff, but you're hilariously misguided on proper game design. You also invest waaaaaaaaaaaaa

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*breathe*


aaaaaaaaaay too much of yourself in the argument. We're talking about Blasters, not you, and I really wish folks hadn't let you derail the conversation for so long by talking about yourself so much.

And yes, I know you've apologized for your earlier behavior. That's fine. Your approach to the conversation is still narrow.

Quoted above makes me headtilt. It's one of the best Secondaries. It's actually an outlier much like Mental. Where Mental lives off Drain Psyche, Elec has amazingly powerful single target attacks. Even if the aura isn't very damaging, the Radius is AMAZING, and Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, and Shocking Grasp are equally amazing.

Fire/Elec is the single most highest DAMAGING (Aka ignoring the benefits of -Regen) combination for a Blaster.

Your very last sentence makes me shake my head, because you just sort of posted and bashed probably it's best power.

not really a matter of repeating myself, but your last statement was:

If you're aware of my position, shouldn't you know that I'm not using my personal accomplishments to justify Blasters being fine? I was replying to this statement because it carried an undertone of implication, which was that of me saying that my accomplishments= Blasters are fine. Now, I can totally understand why people might think that was my position based on my earlier reactions in this thread which is why I quoted the apology. If you're already aware of my clarified-since-then position, I guess I just don't understand what you're trying to say here.

It says that I'm getting frustrated and snappish and should probably do something else.

Did someone not tell you yet that /Dark gets Soul Drain?

Baha, trust me. I've been there. See: My apology.

Out of curiosity does AE in this case stand for something other than Architect Entertainment? >.>
Looks like the fellow who was running a "revision" of my Fire/MM was at 387 DPS on his best run. I really don't care for his revision of the build and think I could have personally done better given my preferred slotting choices (currently on the bottom of page 115 in the Pylon thread.)

Doesn't mean squat unless saturated. Didn't you go on about Drain Psyche being poor outside of -Regen with out saturation?

I'm willing to concede Fire/Dark possibly being superior, as even a permanent +50% Damage is hard to ignore as 'powerful'. But that does beg the question why people feel /Dark is weak. Maybe because it promotes Blapping?

Fire/Dark might edge out in damage, it'd have to be tested, but it can't challenge Elecs Perma Endurance.

Never implied reliance upon saturation was a weakness, I view it more as a balance. If things that required tohit checks and x targets for max buffs didn't have those conditions (ie; Soul Drain, Drain Psyche) they WOULD be overpowered. As they are now, the conditional discrepency is what makes them fair. Doesn't mean they're any less awesome.

Well with a high end /Soul Drain build you'll want to pick a primary with a Crashless nuke. Fire is the ST set on Blasters, you'll be seeing more AOE potential at max investment with Archery or DP, I guess AR also but the nuke is a cone so I am not seeing the synergy with /Dark. If you want a ST Blaster Fire/Ment is going to beat /Dark because of the -regen so I personally can't see the appeal in building a ST /Dark Blaster. As far as AOE goes though, Archery/Dark is > Archery/Ment, except with much less survivability potential in those sticky AOE situations and nowhere near the ST potential, once again due to a lack of -regen.

Basically if that extra AOE goodness from Soul Drain is worth those sacrifices to make an ultimate AOE Blaster, assuming you can afford to invest enough to keep yourself alive, go Arch/Dark but for a more well rounded performance it's Arch/Ment all the way.

Architect. I was planning on spending at least some of the next few weekends working on a new performance testing arc. Dialing in the balance can take a lot of iterative testing, and sometimes I want to do things the architect doesn't really present a straight forward way to do. I also have the basics of missions 1 through 4 sketched out, but I'm still thinking about mission 5 (technically, its likely to be mission 4).

I'm also spending a bit more time fleshing out the thing to have a coherent story and all the important blanks filled out, which challenge arcs don't really need but I could use the practice.